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[Dota 2] Nyx Assassin, Keeper of the Light, and Visage this week, and straight to CM.

UI
- The top bar game timer no longer is reset when a game ends.
- Heroes in top bar now draw grayscale when dead.
- The buyback cooldown time now appears in the gold tooltip.
- The buyback cooldown now appears in the form minutes:seconds.

BOTS
- Fixed bots being too aggressive about destroying enemy items.
- Fixed bug where bots would pick up items like Rapier or Aegis without giving humans a chance at them.
- After all humans have picked heroes, the remaining bots will now immediately pick their heroes.
- Fixed bug where bots would try to farm the same neutral camp that a human was farming.
- Added support for bots buying and placing Observer Wards:
. The more of a support a hero is, the more likely they are to buy wards.
. If they have a human teammate, they will not purchase enough wards to fully deplete the store.
. They will ward the runes, their jungle, and sometimes the enemy jungle (depending on how pushed the lanes are).
. They won't go to locations to place wards if they think it's too dangerous.
- Fixed bug that would sometimes prevent bots from defending their top/bottom lanes when the tier 3 towers/racks are gone.
- Fixed bug where if the incoming threat was small, no one would ever be a selected to defend (typically resulting in no defensive response to creeps).

I can see why they'd want to go f2p, even if lol didn't exist. Team Fortress 2 makes them a ton of money, and dota 2 might be the only new game they'll be releasing this year. So cash shop it up. The problem I think they'll have if they don't modify things enough is that tf2 and dota 2 are wildly different games from every angle. Team Fortress 2 is very basic and easy to understand and play. Players can reach their supposed ceiling with what the game offers quickly, and all the competition has levels and stuff to grind (since just being a good game isn't nearly enough anymore). On the other hand, dota 2 is a much larger and more complex game when it comes to basics. It just takes longer to learn, so it will also take longer for people to decide whether or not they like it, which it will also take longer for them to decide whether or not they want to invest any money into it. Are they going to buy cosmetics for 1 hero out of over 100 when they've only even tried 15 of them? League of Legends gets around the entire thing by constantly releasing new champions and locking new players out of most of the roster. If they're forced to only play a few champions at a time then it feels more worthwhile to invest in a few, especially when the rotation comes around and they can't play the champion that they've started to enjoy. And if dota 2 went that way I would just stop playing.

The silver lining is that Valve has to make dota 2 really appealing and basically enjoyable for new players (hopefully) without actually changing how it plays, otherwise they don't get the potential revenue from people who stick around.

So I still feel that f2p is terrible, but I'm still hopeful. I care little for Valve, but I respect Icefrog and the rest of his team enough to give the game more chances than I normally would.

I am resigned to that fate, but still hoping the actual f2p system they go with isn't too dumb.

My problem is still that most every f2p system is designed to bilk dedicated players while keeping the basic entry barrier low. Their very existence is repugnant to me.

I'm hoping it's not like LoL where you have to earn points to unlock heroes. I was ok with it in LoL, but now that I have access to anyone I want to play, I like it a whole hell of a lot better. Hopefully there's an option to just buy in at the start, or they just sell cosmetic stuff and the heroes are all available from the start.

I still don't want a surrender vote.
I don't know about the allies and opponents you are playing with and against, but I'm much happier having to play out a few curbstomps as opposed to having some shitheel stop fighting and bitch at everyone who won't concede when we have a better lategame.

I only really play Valve games through once, and sometimes it is an effort, mostly good though. I really liked TF2 at the time though, mostly because it let me rocket jump around like Quake.

I bet GabeN just reads Page's posts about not liking valve then starts flicking different 'Fucks with your shit' switches on his account.
If I had the money and influence to not care I would totally invest a system where bad mannered players had these (currently imaginary) switches thrown to give them technical difficulties and then when they call tech support they'd get flipped off after the tech support person went through their routine with the victim constantly yelling "I'VE DONE THAT ALREADY" and then "Oh look it works now".

My opinion about their games is largely coloured by Half-Life 1 and Counter-Strike. Half-Life's deathmatch was bland and didn't even become remotely decent till years later with competitive mods, and Counter-Strike was pretty much the worst thing I'd played back then--Rainbow Six without any of the interesting parts of realism, Quake without any of the fun unrealistic stuff. Also, Counter-Strike players were terrible people (read: obnoxious kids).

And I love fps games . . . provided they were made before the turn of the millennium. Quake 3 is still the game that I've put the most hours into in my life, more than Diablo 2 (never played mmos). I still have it installed and still play it. Even loading up a map and running around is calming for me.

I disliked steam before it was giving me trouble, and now that it isn't giving me much trouble I still don't like it. I don't like having to run my games through a middleman, and whenever an non-steam option is available I take it. But again, some of that dislike is leftovers from steam's early days. I'm primarily a pc gamer and didn't even have steam installed until dota 2.

(Forgot about the new CS. I'm actually in the Tactical Intervention beta.)

Yes I played Warsow. Wonderful physics but terrible weapons. But I haven't played for years and I've heard they improved the weapons some.

I also didn't like Team Fortress 2 (but I respect that it was the developer's decision to change the game and don't particularly prescribe any of it to Valve's influence), and the less said about Deathmatch Classic the better.

Yes I played Warsow. Wonderful physics but terrible weapons. But I haven't played for years and I've heard they improved the weapons some.

I also didn't like Team Fortress 2 (but I respect that it was the developer's decision to change the game and don't particularly prescribe any of it to Valve's influence), and the less said about Deathmatch Classic the better.

They did sort change the weapons, but the rockets are still fucked. Too much vertical bounce and not enough horizontal when you bink someone in the feet, makes it way too easy to chain them and less fun than QW / CPMA.

I still don't want a surrender vote.
I don't know about the allies and opponents you are playing with and against, but I'm much happier having to play out a few curbstomps as opposed to having some shitheel stop fighting and bitch at everyone who won't concede when we have a better lategame.

There's nothing wrong with curbstomps. I'm not against one team totally outclassing another. They deserve that win. I'm against wasting half an hour to an hour of my life. You think this "shitheel" won't stop fighting regardless of surrender vote? In his eyes the game is over. It's a waste of time. He'll either dick around in the fountain to pose less resistance to the enemy so they can finish quicker, or better yet he'll feed them so they'll finish quicker.

I don't know. Just seems odd. Conceding is the most basic idea in any competition.

I'll turn that around on you. What if the winning team of the massacre doesn't want to finish it? They're all just farming up rapiers and getting roshan again and again. Or maybe they don't even bother attacking your nexus towers and instead try to farm kills near the fountain? Should I have to put up with this horseshit, or should I be punished for wanting to end this abortion of a game and start fresh. Total dicks can be on both sides.

My opinion about their games is largely coloured by Half-Life 1 and Counter-Strike. Half-Life's deathmatch was bland and didn't even become remotely decent till years later with competitive mods, and Counter-Strike was pretty much the worst thing I'd played back then--Rainbow Six without any of the interesting parts of realism, Quake without any of the fun unrealistic stuff. Also, Counter-Strike players were terrible people (read: obnoxious kids).

And I love fps games . . . provided they were made before the turn of the millennium. Quake 3 is still the game that I've put the most hours into in my life, more than Diablo 2 (never played mmos). I still have it installed and still play it. Even loading up a map and running around is calming for me.

I disliked steam before it was giving me trouble, and now that it isn't giving me much trouble I still don't like it. I don't like having to run my games through a middleman, and whenever an non-steam option is available I take it. But again, some of that dislike is leftovers from steam's early days. I'm primarily a pc gamer and didn't even have steam installed until dota 2.

(Forgot about the new CS. I'm actually in the Tactical Intervention beta.)

Ok, so, your opinion on valve games is colored by a) the multiplayer component of a game that came out 14 years ago whos main focus was the single player, and b) a mod Valve didnt even make?

Do you see the problem there?

Also for the record, CS:GO isn't being done by Valve. It's primarily being done by Hidden Path.

Considering that CS:Source is even worse than CS I have no problem thinking what I think. Especially when I only really care about the multiplayer to begin with. And it's not like Half-Life 2's deathmatch was any better (it was worse). Plus they inexplicably removed gibs, which I've always been a little bothered by.

Considering that CS:Source is even worse than CS I have no problem thinking what I think. Especially when I only really care about the multiplayer to begin with. And it's not like Half-Life 2's deathmatch was any better (it was worse). Plus they inexplicably removed gibs, which I've always been a little bothered by.

Still, the monkey wrench in Opposing Force was wonderful.

No one cares about HL (1 or 2) deathmatch because the games focus were singleplayer. It's like judging a fighting game based off its story mode.

Simply, Valve has never made a game that I love. They've put out a few that I've enjoyed, but nothing that stands out. That's why I have no particular confidence in them as a developer. Frankly, I'd be more enthused about dota 2 if Valve had hired Icefrog out as a separate studio or were just publishing it. It's not that I hate Valve, more than I'm ambivalent toward them.